Why do some characters load from the smart content figure window, and others don't?
Why do some characters load from the smart content figure window, and others don't? Boris for G2M appears in the figure window, but clicking on it just puts the image in the upper left box. Clicking on that loads the information window. On the other hand, loading G2M first and then clicking on Boris loads Boris just fine. What's going on here?
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A character preset will load the base figure, if you don't have one laoded and selected (what it does if you do depends on the preferences). A shaping or materials preset will not load the base figure, it requires that the figure be loaded and selected.
So some of the figures 'for G2M' are not characters, but shaping and materials presets?
Weird.
I think I am "lost in space" on some of this stuff.
Basically, all characters are is a set of shaping and materials presets for a specific base figure. As Richard said, if saved as a character preset, when you click it DAZ grabs the specific base figure (such as Michael 6) and applies the shaping and materials preset to that base. For items saved as only shaping and materials, with no character preset, the only difference is that you have to load the figure first.
Even characters allow you to load materials or shaping separately, they just have an additional file. I was poking around with some G2F for background characters recently and some of them are packaged the same way as the G2M characters - no full "one-click" preset. While there are many G2 characters that load everything at once, it seems that the practice of adding a character preset save to assets became a regular thing around when G3 came up (but I could be wrong about the specific timing).
Edited to fix paragraph break
Every character is built upon the specific base genesis generation.
Genesis 8 Female is the base.
Victoria 8 is a morph and texure set for base Genesis 8 Female. Victoria is the flagship figure with a long history of development here at DAZ3D
Victoria 1-4 were the base figures prior to Genesis 1 being introduced. Victoria 5 was a morph and texture set for Base Genesis 1. That figure was introduced about 10 years ago more or less.
I'm still not clear on the nomenclature. I get that there are base figures and morph presets, and materials. It's not clear to me whether a 'character' is different from an 'actor'. Nor is it clear whether 'shaping and material presets' represents a different thing than the other two.
One problem I have with the Daz business model is that they don't seem to have many standards that vendors have to conform to, especially in product description. Some are quite clear on what you're getting, others are not. I think that if Daz did impose more consistency, it would make paying customers more likely to continue with the system rather than buy a few things, get frustrated, and bail out to Character Creator and Blender. Plus, it would be the 'right thing to do' for the paying customers.
Also, the controls for setting up scenes and poses are the most primitive I've yet seen. How about getting just a touch modern?
As noted above, a character is a set of shapes, materials, and occasionally other items (eyebrows, facial hair, etc.) for a base figure. The actor (as labeled in Daz Studio) is the character preset that loads the base figure and applies the initial shapes, materials, and other items.
I beleive that what you are calling "morph presets" above are the same as a Shaping Preset. A shaping preset allows you to save morph settings for a particular figure, which can be applied to any other figure of the same generation (or shared between G7, G8, and G8.1 if you have the same packages across them) as long as the morphs are present. For example, if you take the base Genesis 8 Female and use the Genesis 8 Female Body Morphs and/or Genesis 8 Female Head Morphs to create a unique look, you can save that preset so it can be applied to another G8F figure. A custom designed morph (like a deformed arm) that is created somewhere else and imoprted into Daz Studio with Morph Loader (or included with a character or other product) would be a morph asset.
A materials preset is similar to a shaping preset in that it allows you to save the specific mix of materials you have applied to the figure. Really, all the materials included with a character are materials presets (skin, eyes, lips, nails, etc.) and can be applied to any figure if the same generation (Genesis - Geneis 2) or multiple generations (Genesis 3 - Genesis 8.1), though only forward, so a G7 material will load for G8, but not vice versa by default. Of course in most implementations, while you can apply eyeshadow across figures, it replaces the whole face material so if the base skin is from a different character package, the face will not match.
All products in the store list everything you get in the What's Included and Features section, down to the textures. The "Details" is just the sales pitch, and some PAs are much better at writing them than others. I wish more items would call out the DAZ assets used in the promo images and note items that are not from DAZ like custom characters, assets from other stores, etc. ( i.e. hair and outfit not sold by Daz), but I know that there are many PAs who commission the promo images and don't have this info.
ETA note about sharing shaping presets between G7-G8.1.
Thank you for the clear explanation. Only thing I found confusing was the reference to 'G7'. I was under the impression that it went from G3 to G8 with nothing in between?
Sorry, I meant G3, but Victoria 7 always messes me up in that for some reason, even though I get all the other generations right. :)
To be fair, Genesis 3 is generation 7 of Daz's original figures.
Yeah, the generation terminology is messed up. I would think it would be obvious to Daz that naming the first 'Genesis' figure 'Genesis' and not something like 'Generation 5' was going to cause problems as soon as they came out with Genesis 2. "Gen 5" would have been a better choice.
I understand the logic of it. Earlier generations were based on named figures, by which I mean that the base female for gen4 was Victoria 4, and the base male was Michael 4. I could be misremembering, because I wasn't around in those days, but I believe there were also multiple bases, so Aiko 4 wasn't a morph of Victoria, but a separate figure, and so on. With Genesis, the figures started from a generic base, and Michael, Victoria etc. we're morphs on that base. The first generation of Genesis was also unisex, which I'm guessing they expected would work out better than it did. Put all that together, and it makes at least some sense to treat it like an entirely new line, rather than simply the next iteration of how they'd been doing things.
I think I recall having a similar issue after I installed Daz on a recently new system When you're in the Smart Content tab, make sure the selected tab at the top is "Files" instead of "Products". Both of those tabs at the top will yield pretty much the exact same base list, so if you happen to unknowingly switch over to the "Products" tab, it can throw you for a loop trying to figure out what happened. I had this happen to me and thought that I or DIM somehow screwed up the installation, but clicking on the "Files" tab got me to where I needed to go.
Ha! That worked! Figures load straight from the icon that way. On the other hand, it seems that the 'Products' tab is the way to go for clothes if you want to apply a multi-part outfit. Thanks! That was very helpful.